


Rewind, Reroute, Relapse

by Nitzer



Series: pre and post [3]
Category: Winner (Band)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Kinda Hopeful Ending, M/M, Past Relationship(s), Stream of Consciousness, honestly ignore the pairing tags bc this isn't really about that, hoony won't stop talking about taehyun, it's past taehyun/hoony and present 2seung kinda, kind of a montage of winner's entire career, makes a lot of references to winner tv and sentimental, mentions of ikon and one, really ansgty like lots of angst, stupidly long paragraphs, very very hoony centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-20
Updated: 2018-08-20
Packaged: 2019-06-30 08:00:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15747585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nitzer/pseuds/Nitzer
Summary: Underneath all the rambling and in between every memory Seunghoon has about Taehyun and Seungyoon and all of Winner, he has something to say, really--something about letting go or holding on maybe but definitely something about ghosts.





	Rewind, Reroute, Relapse

**Author's Note:**

> this makes heavy references to Winner's early career bc when i say "i miss Winner" what i really mean is "i miss Taehyun" and that's also why i have this much to say about Taehyun and Seunghoon and Winner and everything that went down  
> as always: fuck YG and if you miss Taehyun too support him and South Club <3  
> (aside from the 2seung and the Taehyun/Seunghoon, there's some lightly implied Seunghoon/Jinwoo and Taehyun/Seungyoon)

The artsy, poetic, lyrical part of my brain (a part I was barely familiar with because Seungyoon and Minho took care of lyrics and I went up two or three flights to try to convince the company to  _let_  us have a comeback) sometimes thought that I had something so beautiful that I couldn’t touch it—couldn’t hold onto it. I didn’t tend to agree with it (or listen to it, what was the use of thinking of things that sounded pretty if the best I got to do was occasionally toss out a concept suggestion) but the thought resurfaced every once in a while, becoming a regular part of my life until I had to pay attention to it. I guess I did barely cup my hand over something so beautiful that I couldn’t really bear to hold onto because it was gone.

Taehyun was really something I couldn’t hold, not properly at least. He fluttered into my life—light and easy and delicate—not like the whirlwind that Seungyoon was, not like the force Minho was, not the way Jinwoo stuck to me like nettles used to get stuck in my socks. Taehyun wasn’t sudden, a little unexpected maybe, but he drifted around us for a while before YG stuck him in Team A. I did see it coming. The same way a butterfly flutters around for a while before finding a place to settle. Taehyun took a while to commit, to settle with Team A, with me. He settled down delicately, beautifully like a butterfly and I knew that this was only his perch for as long as he wanted it. I knew I couldn’t close my hand over him, keep him, capture him without hurting him beyond repair. So I never did close my hand, never did keep him. He always remained free to leave, delicately settled. So he did leave, eventually because I never closed my hand, because I could never hurt him that bad.

It seems dumb—really stupid—to call Taehyun “too beautiful to hold” looking at pictures of him with us, without us, from his Instagram, whatever. Seems especially stupid when I’ve been all up in Jinwoo’s space in nearly every way possible, when I’ve bodyslammed him before because he wouldn’t get out of my way in the kitchen. Jinwoo is obviously, objectively  _more_  beautiful than Taehyun with his pretty, wide doe eyes and his soft, innocent demeanor. Taehyun is weird looking, is the conclusion I draw after looking at pictures of him with us during  _Mix and Match_  and  _Winner TV_ and whatever other stuff the fans caught (because the fan pictures are the only ones I find anymore, because the fans are the only ones that really talk about Taehyun anymore, Taehyun-as-a-member-of-Winner at least). I look at the pictures a lot, a lot more than I should, I study them like they contain the secrets to our success and through all that I conclude that Taehyun is weird looking. His face is made up of all ovals and the high arches of high eyebrows leave him looking perpetually surprised and there are deep lines etched in his face (from worry? From stress? From illness? From lack of sleep? I have really no idea). So calling him beautiful, calling him  _that_  beautiful is ridiculous. But he left. He fluttered away. So I have to call him something, something treasured, something valued and my brained settled on beautiful.

I call Taehyun beautiful thoughtlessly, as a reflex almost, because he is something I ache for when the nights are dark and long and lonely. It’s a habit at some point. It’s obsessive. I look at Taehyun with horribly damaged, crispy bleached hair, his skin caked in foundation at least two shades too light because his skin is covered in stress acne and call him beautiful. It’s objectively wrong. He’s not beautiful. He’s interesting at best. But my brain draws up a Taehyun that is beautiful. My brain draws up whatever version of Taehyun it wants because the real thing slipped through my fingers and deleted my number. I don’t have anything to correct the version in my head anymore.

So I fill up my phone with candids from concerts and fan meets and airport trips (but mostly concerts, mostly him singing or playing guitar because it makes my heart flutter or ache or something like that). I call Taehyun—Taehyun-with-Winner, Taehyun—beautiful with no evidence to back it up, just faint memories and stinging feelings. Until there is more than Taehyun-with-Winner and Nam Taehyun solo, just as he is, who I sometimes see photos of busking around the streets of Seoul with his guitar case and an easel (for whatever reason). Then there’s Taehyun-of-South-Club too. And Taehyun-of-South-Club  _is_  beautiful. He is not a figment that my brain has drawn up on faint memories. He’s not a Taehyun I’ve ever known and he  _is_  beautiful.

It’s a smaller headline on Naver that shows me a photo shoot of Taehyun-of-South-Club. There’s been whispers of Taehyun’s next move for months and I’ve seen the new tattoo on him that says “South Buyer’s Club” (but only grainy, through some preview of a fansite picture on twitter) and I  _know_  what’s coming. Taehyun is tanner than I’ve ever seen him and his hair is its natural color again—healthy and soft—and his face has filled out and his tattoos (all of them, all the millions or whatever) are on full display with the light tank top. And he really is beautiful. He really takes my breath away. And I know, in a part of my brain that I usually shut up, that this Taehyun never could’ve existed in Winner. (That maybe Winner couldn’t have continued existing with Taehyun and that Taehyun almost certainly couldn’t have continued existing in Winner either.)

But Taehyun knew when to leave. He always knew when to leave, when it wasn’t worth it anymore. It was one of his great talents. (Leaving in general was one of his great talents.) And he never would’ve ended up here, at another infamous Yelow’s Mob party (at least I think it’s them again) this late. Taehyun knew when things weren’t fun anymore, were getting too sloppy and out of hand and he left. Taehyun didn’t even like parties anyway, he always spent them outside on the balcony (or whatever was available), smoking and looking at the stars. He never even drank at parties—most of us didn’t, honestly. I didn’t drink on principle, Jinwoo only liked quiet glasses of wine at the dorms with a movie, Minho certainly  _held_ glasses of whatever but I’d never seen him drink any and Taehyun only drank those microbrews we had to drive miles to the coast to get. Seungyoon was the only one in the group who really drank and really partied because if there was only one of us that did something risky or irresponsible it was always Seungyoon. And he was why I was at whoever’s party, dead sober (as always), way too late at night with a sloppy drunk Hanbin, knowing that we had a radio show in hours that Seungyoon was almost certainly still going to be drunk for.

Taehyun would’ve left already. I should’ve left already. But Taehyun left (in every sense of the word) years ago now and Seungyoon was the baby now and maybe one of us should finally put some effort into looking after him. Even if he’s been sloppy drunk since midnight and he walked away with Hanbin hours ago and didn’t come back when Hanbin plopped down next to me. It’s probably a bust anyway because none of us are good at taking care of each other, none of us took care of Taehyun—except in fleeting moments when we felt there was no other choice (and even then it was usually Jinwoo or Seungyoon who stepped in and not me). None of us could breech the self-contained, quietly brewing mess that was Taehyun before and no one could breech the less-than-sober, impending implosion that was Seungyoon now. (But Seungyoon could explode and continue existing, with Winner, with YG, like nothing ever happened and if Taehyun did not leave when he did things never would’ve been the same for the company—for us. It would’ve been something that even YG couldn’t cover up.)

Back when we got back from Japan for the first time and YG, I guess, learned what dealing with a rookie group was like again before deciding they wanted no part of it, we had a lot of free time. For Minho and Seungyoon that meant a lot of free time to play around with the Ikon kids under some kind of pretense of writing songs. For Jinwoo it meant dramas and video games. For me and Taehyun…it didn’t mean anything really. It meant failure mostly. Taehyun wrote a lot, as he always did—some of it in his hurried and scrawled handwriting on various scraps of paper around his room and some hidden away neatly on his phone or laptop. I danced some, thought about choreographing, remembered what terrible dancers most of the other members were and stopped. And I think Taehyun could tell (I think he knew a lot of things that he didn’t let on to, I think he knew a lot more about us than we ever would about him) that we were both drowning in excess creativity and energy because he came to me talking about a day trip to the sea. Not Minho, who he shared his art with. Not Seungyoon, who he was closest to in age. Not Jinwoo, who had such a soft spot for the maknae and would do anything he asked. Me.

I go, probably unsurprisingly. I drive two hours with him, over pretty and scenic routes to somewhere Taehyun feels intimately familiar with. It ends up being a cozy brewery with an attached restaurant and lots of open windows for the nice sea breeze and a beautiful view. It doesn’t feel like somewhere a twenty-one-year-old who spent most of his adolescence stuck in a trainee room should know about. But Taehyun’s never felt his age, never felt like a maknae (instead, he’s always felt simultaneously like an over-burdened older brother and an inexperienced kid stumbling around things for the first time). He recommends me at least three of the beers that are exclusive to the brewery and I drink them even though I never drink (and I’m driving) because Taehyun is drinking for the first time I’ve seen too.

He pays for everything himself and takes me down to the beach (which is cold and nearly empty and the sand is coarse) for a walk to “sober up.” I guess I  _am_  driving us home but I really don’t need to sober up, I barely sipped at any of the three beers Taehyun ordered for me. And anything I did drink definitely got soaked up by all the food he also ordered. But Taehyun doesn’t drink a lot and he doesn’t eat a lot and he doesn’t leave the house a lot. And he certainly doesn’t take me on little, mini adventures ever. So I walk with him. He holds his boots in one hand, his bare feet in the sand, the other hand keeps brushing against mine but never gets closer than a brush. He talks about a lot of things—lyrics, his music, his art, he mentions his mother and his younger brother a lot. Tipsy Taehyun has less concrete boundaries than sober Taehyun and gets closer to me than he ever has before. The conversation comes out in a slow trickle while I wait for Taehyun to stop getting lost in his own head but I never stop him from talking.

I notice that the sun setting earlier than I remember—the orange and pink and red, draped over rough seas. It must be fall already. Taehyun takes my hand on the way back to the car, his shoes back on his feet, huddled in a jacket that could be warmer. “Thanks for coming with me.” He admits. He feels so small and his hands fit so cutely in mine. He’s walking closer to me than he needs to, like maybe this means something.

I let my mind wander back to the prank he and the production team played on the other members when we were in Japan, when YG still had some interest in promoting us. I was the only one he never tested. It was a dumb prank anyway because Taehyun never acted like a maknae and would never end up in a situation like that. He snuck out frequently (I knew, we all knew) but all he ever did was smoke a cigarette and wander around darkened cities. And he never invited any of us and he never drank and he never did anything reckless. I suppose  _this_  whole trip—here, by the sea—was out of character for Taehyun, too. And I remembered his unbelievably accurate reading of every one of us and his acting skills and him fake crying for Seungyoon and everything else that gave him the ability to be dangerously manipulative. And I think that maybe this is his chance to finally test me, to see what I’ll do for him—to see where we stand. So I just respond with, “thanks for the food,” because I guess I’ve always been cynical like that.

Seungyoon really is a more suitable maknae, even if he’s also the leader. He either thinks things through too hard—getting caught up in plans for days—or he doesn’t think things through at all. And Seungyoon was messy, in…everything really. His room was messy and his cooking style was messy and his thoughts were messy and his actions were messy and he left some kind of mess where ever he went. He’s impulsive and playful and feels more like someone you can take care of. His problems aren’t cryptic and well-hidden and wrapped up in layers of smoke and pretty prose and poetry. He’s open and simple and his face is so easy to read and even with all his acting experience he can’t hide anything. (Except the developing alcohol problem he was handily hiding from the public but not the company and not us.) So when he bounds towards me, absolutely wasted, with an equally-as-fucked-up Bobby in tow, his round face split into a sunny grin, I don’t have to doubt it. He’s an open book and his affection is occasionally ill-time and regretful but it’s always genuine.

Jinwoo is easy too. Well, Jinwoo is easy. Seungyoon is simple and easy-to-read and genuine. Jinwoo is just easy. His boundaries are malleable and his affection doesn’t change its meaning with any of us. He doesn’t commit (ever, to anything, unless he’s forced to) and his affection is half-baked and his loyalty is faulty but it’s no mystery. He’s just flaky and spacey and dumb. So I only kiss him twice. Actually, he kisses me twice. Once is when Minho is still on  _Show me the Money_  so I’m acting as his fill-in drama partner. Jinwoo is drinking more wine than he normally does and he’s curled up next to me on the couch like a contented cat. And Jinwoo is all soft, doe eyes and a pliant demeanor and endless beauty that maybe I’ve overlooked in the years of living with him. And I’m curious and he’s drunk. He kisses me with the big, romantic scene of the drama playing in the background. His lips are soft and his mouth is pliant and he’s so easy under me. There’s no fun. I never even really get to  _taste_  him, both of our tongues staying in our own mouths. Jinwoo seems indifferent to this failure (maybe he doesn’t even consider it a failure) and falls asleep on the couch an episode later.

The second time is miserably desperate. Taehyun has left the group, YG hasn’t said anything about  _Winner_ , about the rest of us yet, just Taehyun. The future is scary and uncertain, more than it ever has been before. YG tells the public that Taehyun has left and that 2NE1 is no longer, they don’t mention Winner. The uncertainty, the anger, the misery even makes it into Jinwoo’s pretty, little oblivious bubble. He pulls me down and mashes our mouths together late one night and his mouth is still soft but he’s not pliant and all I can taste is sober desperation. I let him kiss me because I think he needs it. I think he needs something to cling to, so I let him have me. (And in that, I’m kinder, softer and more caring to the only member older than me than I’ve ever been to either of the maknaes because I’m backwards and the group is backwards too.)

I never kiss Minho. I guess I never get around to it, the situation never arises. Maybe neither of us really want it. Either way, it never happens. I never kiss Seungyoon either but I get closer to kissing him than I do Minho. It feels like an inevitable event on the horizon and I don’t dread it. I kiss Taehyun many times—many, many times. All of them ill-advised. All of them only haunting me later. Making me call him beautiful. Making me create versions of him that never existed in reality. Making all memories of him sting.

Seungyoon does not sting. I spend a lot of time trying to compare him and Taehyun—new maknae and old maknae, the two youngest, the two composers, the two most responsible—but there is no comparison. There just isn’t. We all, I think, worry more about Seungyoon after Taehyun leaves because leaving is suddenly a very real possibility. But we don’t worry well and our care is misguided, hidden and clumsy. We’re all just projecting our own anxieties onto Seungyoon anyway. Even if the rest of us left and YG crumbled to the ground, Seungyoon would be there until the last second. He was committed, painfully so, and I knew he’d never turn back. So when Seungyoon appears from the crowd of the party and sticks himself to my side again, I don’t have to wonder if it’s genuine. He’s always genuine. He’s really happy to see me—even plastered, he’s the same kid.

Taehyun is the one who kisses me first too. We’re walking from the car to the dorms after getting back from the sea and he’s probably not tipsy anymore but he’s still open and a little bit loose. He’s keeping close to me still even though we left the harsh sea breeze behind and it’s not really cold anymore. He pulls me down (because he’s still shorter than me, even if it never felt substantial before) in the elevator for a quick kiss. He doesn’t taste like the beer he had, he tastes like the ocean. And he looks so pleased with himself, so actually  _happy_ —smiling in to the kiss. I let him kiss me, just like I let him hold my hand the entire night, but I don’t let it mean anything. He’s still acting like he’s drunk (he’s not) and he’s feigning the cute innocence of having a crush. I don’t know what he wants from me, I just know that he’s not getting it.

I own both of the South Club albums. They’re buried in a drawer somewhere because that’s a wound waiting to be ripped open and I’m rarely ready for it. I break down and buy the first one after, at some YG event, I hear “Empty” playing in the background. It’s been years. Taeyhun has obviously moved on, Minho has moved on, even YG, the man himself, has moved on. Everyone has moved on. Except me. Because when I hear Taehyun’s voice, unexpectedly, with no time to put up any kind of wall my eyes prickle with tears. I buy myself the albums for a few reasons: to remind myself that Taehyun has moved on, to hopefully start moving on myself and to get myself used to hearing his voice again. I’m not interested in crying in the stall of a men’s bathroom with marble flooring and complimentary hand lotion again because one of our (they’re  _ours_ , they belong to  _Winner_ and not Taehyun) songs plays at an event for the company that owns them. (Owns us, but I try not to think about that.)

The party plays mostly looping beats, probably from Hwimin and…I always forget the other kid’s name. They haven’t played anything from YG or SM or JYP or even anything from the break out darlings at BTS. I guess we’re all musicians, we’re all trying to be cool. Most of our idols are not Taeyang or GD or Tablo really, we just say that because the company likes it better. I remember all the Beck albums in Taehyun’s room and how starry-eyed he got over every one of Hyukoh’s releases. Seungyoon loves trot more than any kid his age has any right to. But instead we said Taeyang and GD or whatever and it wasn’t only good for the company, it let us keep something important to us for once. Something no one ever had to know about or would pry into. We got to keep our personal idols close, private. (It does occur to me that the only albums I own are the two South Club ones but Taehyun isn’t a “personal idol,” he’s someone I put my hands, my lips, my hopes on. He’s too real to be an idol to me.)

Seungyoon’s swaying to some beat in his head (at least I hope he is because if he’s trying to dance to what’s playing over the speakers, he’s failing miserably) against me. “Don’t you wanna dance, hyung?” His words aren’t too slurred yet. He’s actually always been rather good with words even as fucked up as he is. I don’t know how to explain (in someone’s darkened apartment, over a pounding and repetitive beat, with a radio show scheduled for us in a few hours) that I  _don’t_  want to dance. That I lost my passion somewhere in between never being able to choreograph what I want and not being able to choreograph at all. I was sick of freestyling funny moves on variety shows. I was sick of the same choreography we did for every song that didn’t belong to Taehyun (every song with Taehyun’s voice was unavoidably  _his_ …unfortunately). And I hated the muted, basic choreography we did for Taehyun’s songs. “Dance” had been divided up into a bunch of pieces that don’t mean anything to me, that weren’t  _dance_. And in doing that, the company managed to ruin the one thing I ever really loved.

I steady Seungyoon against me though, grabbing his hands. “Are you even hearing the music?” I tease.

He laughs and his laughs are deep and full of bass and genuine. They aren’t fizzing and light, barely making it out past his teeth. Like I said, there’s really no comparison. They’re too different. I can’t stop, though. In my mind, Seungyoon is always overlaid with some fading, washed out, ghostly version of Taehyun. Because I’m the only one who never let go. (I’m also the only one without his number. The only one that never comments on his posts. The only one that never checks up on him. The only one who blows up on interviewers who ask about him. I’m always the last one left when it comes to Taehyun.)

Seungyoon isn’t only too real to be a personal idol, he’s too real to be an idol at all. He’s too genuine. His smile is too wide. His hopes and dreams are too obvious. He’s too open. He’s too easy-to-read. He could never stifle his laughter or hold back his tears or hide the red that crept up his face with frustration. He was too familiar too. He felt like some kid I went to school with even when I met him for the first time. He was easy to get along with, to love. And I knew he was popular, I’d seen all the signs in the audiences and all the presents at fanmeets. And I knew he was talented, I’d never become numb to what his voice could do (I just never stopped hearing Taehyun’s voice as the backing track either). He just never became an idol to me. He wasn’t suited to it. He should’ve gone solo when he got the chance.

I never find out what Taehyun did want from me. Not even years later, when we’ve officially reconciled. (Did we even leave on bad terms? Do we even need a reconciliation? Did any of us ever blame Taehyun for how it happened?) We sit around a table in a cozy restaurant we used to go in our trainee days for drinks and chicken but mostly chicken, I guess. Seungyoon, as usual, is the only one drinking. Minho orders a drink but doesn’t touch it, like usual. Me and Jinwoo just have soda, like usual. Taehyun just has water (that isn’t normal to me but I’m working with outdated information). Taehyun is awkward, to himself, trying his best—like he’s always been. He’s got dark hair again, it’s longer now and thick eyeliner and so many more tattoos than I ever thought he’d have. He still smells like smoke (I think it even smells like the same brand but the Taehyun in my head is so distorted, the memories so twisted).

Seungyoon tries to keep things from being awkward. He’s friendly and loud and does impersonations of Ikon and Big Bang, Minho backs him up. I usually do too but I can’t. I don’t really say anything to Taehyun because I’m not ready, I haven’t moved on. And it hurts even worse, surrounded by the concrete evidence that everyone else  _has_  moved on and I’m standing still. I pick at the chicken and wonder if the rest of South Club are finding out that Taehyun rarely drinks (that he only drinks those stupid microbrews) yet and what cigarettes to pick up for him. I wonder if any of them know what his mouth tastes like. But I don’t know anything about any of them, I’ve never been able to tear my eyes away from Taehyun long enough to look at the others.

Taehyun gently unfurls, opens up, smiles, brightens up with Seungyoon. And Jinwoo hasn’t even had anything to drink but he cries at some point, he can’t explain it but Taehyun tells him not to cry anyway. He tells him there’s nothing to cry over. He tells him that he’s happy (I’ve read the interviews where he talks about his mental illness, the ones where he admits to missing idol life, the ones where he admits to the stress of being entirely in charge, of doing everything by yourself). He tells him that everything worked out the best it could. And then Seungyoon makes him laugh again, I can’t remember with what. And Minho is left out and Jinwoo is still drying his tears. I’m relegated to a passive observer of the scene. The maknaes look bright anyway, look complimentary somehow (Seungyoon’s fried, white-blond hair looks better on him than it ever did on Taehyun and Taehyun is pulling off black quite well), look happy. I wonder why I can’t reach out like Seungyoon. And I wonder, with how happy they look, with how easy it seems for both of them, if I was the only one in Winner that Taehyun ever kissed.

But I never ask any of that. I never voice any of my wonderings. So I never figure out what Taehyun wanted from me all those years ago. So maybe I keep my promise to myself that I wouldn’t give him whatever he wanted from me. Even though I give him a whole lot, maybe we never find the one thing he actually  _wanted_ _,_ the thing that made him kiss me in the first place.

Seungyoon’s a terrible dancer because he knows what he wants to do before he even hears the music. He’s always been like that, it’s just that sometimes we can tone down the movements enough that they don’t look too out of place with the music. (It’s not one of the things that makes me think he’s unsuited to being an idol but maybe it should be.) And there’s no toning him down this drunk, this hidden from public eye. He’s swaying slowly to a beat that has a looping “yeah, yeah, yeah” and big, loud trumpets. I think he has to be hearing something else. He’s feeling himself, though, his eyes closed and his mouth pursed in concentration.

I only mean to hold him steady, to watch someone else dance for once. The music isn’t even inspiring and it’s too loud. But Hanbin is gone and so is everyone else I recognize and there are no words for me to improvise to this time. I’m just feeling the music and my body reacts automatically. For the first time in a long time. Seungyoon lights up when he sees that I’m dancing, he wraps his arms around me and pulls me closer. I manage to keep dancing. It’s not impressive. It’s nothing I would put forward for the camera (and, god, I’ve been thinking about doing  _Hit the Stage_  for a while now) but I’m still dancing. Jinwoo kept modeling. Minho kept rapping. Taehyun kept making music. Seungyoon kept singing. And finally, finally I’m dancing again. Maybe it’s the first step in something.

I’m sitting with Minho in the living room of the dorms, days after my trip to the sea with Taehyun. He’s watching something on TV, I’m pretending to be occupied with my phone. I’m thinking about Taehyun, despite my best efforts. “Hey, is Taehyun the shortest out of us?” I ask off-handedly. He felt so small against me that night. And I knew I was the tallest, we all knew but on one ever bothered to ask who was the shortest. I wonder if that was something he managed to fake too.

“I don’t know,” he answers distractedly, “I think Yoonie is.” Maybe we all started comparing them before Seungyoon became the maknae anyway. Maybe there was always a need to compare our two babies. Maybe there were always too many similarities to overlook.

During the promotions for “Sentimental” both me and Taehyun say that we prefer hearing “I miss you” to “I love you.” It’s a peek into the future for us. It’s something that will make both of us laugh bitterly looking back. We never say “I love you” in private and even when the situation arises, even when it’s been  _years_  we don’t say “I miss you” either. I just type it into three different messaging apps, under his contact information a million different times. But I’m never drunk enough to hit send. Because I never drink.

I’m not acting when I dance with Seungyoon. Ever since debut it’s always been acting—dancing  _and_  acting—telling a story with the music, with my body. I’m not doing that here, there’s nothing to express. I’m just moving. It feels so good to  _move_  when I feel like the only one that’s been stuck for years. Seungyoon falls into my rhythm, follows after me. It feels good to take the lead when I’m usually trying my damndest to let the others catch up. And I’m in the lead and I’m dancing what I want and I’m not acting. And it feels good. So good that our radio broadcast hours from now and getting Seungyoon out of here and the flat soda I’ve been sipping on all night get pushed to the back of my mind.

Taehyun takes the lead. He instructs me, hilariously enough, in giving instructions. He’s half-naked under me in the bathroom, his head turned to the side, baring his neck to me. He looks almost cute like this, flushed and trembling. “Don’t touch me until I beg.” He instructs. “You can’t touch me until I beg,” he bites down on some pretty noise, “you have to break me.” He admits quietly. “Please, just break me.” I shouldn’t. I’m setting myself up for something I don’t understand and I’m not prepared for. But Taehyun really is the prettiest broken. He really is truly beautiful in a way I don’t think my brain can’t make up. So I break him down thoroughly every time and make sure he begs (he begs pretty too, something else that is forever imprinted into my brain) because he starts to break down for real otherwise. It’s an arrangement. He gives me the prettiest sights and sounds I’ll ever get and I break him down. I understand that much.

I hear “I Got the Blues” for the first time, locked up in my room and I really  _hear_  Taehyun’s voice like I guess I never have before. I hear the rough edges and the unrestrained power. I hear him do things I always thought Seungyoon was best at, things he never did in Winner songs (which were mostly his songs to begin with). What it means to me is that Taehyun could’ve done this whole thing by himself the entire time. It means that he never needed us. It means that every Winner song could’ve been rapped and sung and choreographed and composed and danced entirely by Taehyun. Taehyun could do Seungyoon’s parts when I thought he couldn’t, when no one else knew he could, when everyone else thought his voice was pretty and impressive but not  _powerful_. He just never showed us because Seungyoon could do it and he never rapped because Minho could do it and he only “helped” with choreography because I could do it. He could’ve done the whole thing by himself. Winner could’ve just been Taehyun and it was only because he chose not to do it alone that the rest of us were there at all. (In the end, Winner  _is_  Taehyun. Winner-with-Taehyun is made entirely by him and Winner-without-Taehyun is obviously stained by his absence. Even if, by the time “Fool” hits, it’s been so long that most of our fans don’t know—or won’t acknowledge—what it means, we still put it out there. As a single, no less.)

Me and Taehyun go back to the sea before “Sentimental,” before we’re too busy, before the cracks in our foundation (Winner’s foundation, I mean but I suppose I could say the same about whatever Taehyun and I are doing) seem irreparable. It’s not the same place as the first time, there’s no brewery and no drinking. The sand is softer and the wind is more forgiving and it’s more populated, a vacation spot in the summertime. We don’t bring towels or swimsuits or anything because Taehyun doesn’t tell me where we’re going. We sit side-by-side in the sand, looking out at the water but we’re still in our jeans and Taehyun’s still in a flannel and the whole thing feels stupid. Taehyun buries his hand under mine in the sand and it’s a painfully pointed reminder that he’s  _crumbling_  under me too. His eyes are red-rimmed more than they’re not and sometimes his hands tremble as he tries to light his cigarettes. He’s not doing well. And his writing is reflecting it—spiraling and desperate—and the company is constantly breathing down his neck. And his skin is always suffocating in thick layers of foundation too light for his skin tone because he’s breaking out worse than a middle-schooler. I hope getting away from Seoul and the company and the cameras and the other’s suffocating worry will be good for him. But I didn’t even plan the trip, I just drove him, so mostly I’m hoping that he can fix himself.

Taehyun isn’t really a mystery, nor is he as unreachable as he seemed in the beginning. He  _does_  talk about himself and tell you things about his life, he gets especially vulnerable about his mom and his brother. I just knew that he did it in carefully measured doses—that everything that came out of his mouth about himself had already been mulled over for a long time and he had already considered all the implications it would have. He also liked talking in vague statements that depended on interpretations. He liked words with multiple meanings. I think he crafted a version of himself that depended entirely on the viewer. He put out a Taehyun that I could so easily warp, that I could shape into whatever made me happiest. Sure,  _I_  created a Taehyun that was beautiful and slippery and fluttered in and away and dissipated from my hold like smoke but Taehyun was the one that laid out a blueprint for me to follow, full of blanks and uncertainties and things that I had to make clear. The only Taehyun that existed out there, free of inaccuracies, of projections was the one that existed with him (and I’m sure that even in his own head there was room to interpret and invent).

Seunyoon is concrete and sure. He never gets a chance to measure and consider the information he’s sharing because it’s already spilling easily from his mouth. He doesn’t get to build the image that Taehyun does. And it is without hesitation that I can tell you that Taehyun  _does_  have an image. That the charismatic, too cool and careless stage presence is an image and even the cute, awkward shy boy he is off stage is an image too. It’s all an image. Seungyoon gets to hide some things, downplay others, play up others but he never really gets to create something far enough away from  _him_  to call it an image. I guess, that in itself is some kind of charming point. The other idols I know just call it stupid and reckless to leave so much of yourself hanging out there for the public to rip apart.

I do eventually crowd Seungyoon out of the apartment that probably doesn’t belong to anyone we know—it might be Jaewon’s, honestly, but do we really know Jaewon either?—because the song is over and I’m sweaty and tired and sick of being crowded by too-close bodies. He’s still giggly and smiley and happy, keeping close and being affectionate without any cameras or crowds to make him second guess how touchy he’s getting. Seungyoon is, luckily, a very happy and giggly drunk. I can’t name a lot of other people I know who are. I didn’t drive here, I’m actually not entirely sure where  _here_  is exactly, and so we have to call a cab. I’m sure it looks like a scandal in the making to the driver but at least I’m sober and the neighborhood doesn’t look that bad once we stumble out of the dark and messy apartment onto the sidewalk. In the backseat of the taxi, Seungyoon shoves himself under my arm and against my side, nuzzling against me like he belongs there. It’s stolen affection, nothing I offered or thought I was willing to give but with boney and red fingers twisting into my coat, I realize that I don’t mind giving it. There’s no ulterior motive. He’s just a kid who needs some reassurance. I can manage at least that.

There are a lot of things I don’t expect to learn about Taehyun. Most obviously, I guess, is what he looks like when he cums, how he begs, what he likes to be called but what sticks to me harder than anything else is how he slept. He always folded himself in, tucked into himself as much as he could, as small as he could make himself and he was already small. I can drape myself around him so easily and I do. I wonder if this is another way to silently ask for affection. I wonder if I’m being goaded into giving him exactly what he wants again. But he trembles in his sleep and whimpers and gasps and twitches when he wakes up, heart beat pounding erratically in my ear. That’s not faked. And he spends hours at night, blankly looking up at the ceiling, not even tossing and turning, just accepting his restlessness. I watch him, letting my eyes wander over the deep lines etched in his face. And I keep him company in his small bed that still feels too big for his crumpled body. It’s not a part of our arrangement. Or any arrangement. It’s something else entirely. And I don’t know what to do with it (because my heart is already aching and he’s still right next to me).

It’s kind of unfair to call Seungyoon a clingy drunk. He’s not clingy—he likes drifting around and dancing by himself—he’s overeager and affectionate and kind of unaware of boundaries, though. He’s always been the one to kiss the rest of us out of affection or excitement. He just thinks less when he’s drunk. So he spends the entire taxi ride plastered to my side and keeps as much of that closeness as he can, getting hauled onto the sidewalk and towards our dorms. He’s smaller than me, I guess—easy to tuck under my arm—but he’s substantial. He doesn’t feel  _small_. And it’s in a building that Taehyun has never inhabited, on our way to dorms that Taehyun has never lived in, in an elevator that Taehyun has never ridden that Seungyoon looks up at me with big, bright eyes and says, “Can I kiss you?”

I just laugh. I can’t believe that it’s an elevator again. “I didn’t think you’d ask.” But I’m already letting him slide in front of me.

“I’m too drunk to just go for it.” He mulls it over in his head. “Or I’m not drunk enough.” He shrugs.

 “I think you’re plenty drunk.” I tell him and he’s laughing against me again. He has to tip-toe to kiss me too and it’s still an elevator and he’s still smiling through the kiss. He’s smiling and laughing and the kiss is blindingly  _bright_  and I let it mean whatever it means this time. He tastes terrible, overwhelmingly of soju and secondhand smoke but I kiss him until the elevator dings, his permanently-pinkish and boney fingers curled into the collar of my coat the whole time.

Us badgering YG for a comeback was nothing new. We had to  _beg_  for our debut and the begging lasts our entire career. It gets inexplicably harder, something in the usual process shifts before “Sentimental” and none of us understand it. The company, all the staff, even YG himself, at some point, tell us that we can’t have a comeback, that it’s not possible because “Taehyun is sick.” But Taehyun’s not sick, he’s not going to the hospital, he’s not got a fever, he’s not throwing up, he’s not weak. He’s not  _sick_. He’s just restless and stressed and crying a lot more than normal. He’s defensive and endlessly guilty, snapping and then apologizing through fat, desperate tears. He’s not “sick” he’s just…not well. And the whole thing’s really crumbling, right in front of me, but I stupidly think that if I don’t look, it won’t happen.

“Sentimental” is a miracle. It’s a miracle that it sounds like it does—the brightest, the most fun of any title tracks we release as Winner-with-Taehyun. It’s a miracle that it gets made at all. It’s a miracle that the company lets us release it, lets the music video get so  _stained_  with Taehyun and his vision. It’s a miracle that we’re not just doing music shows and concerts but variety shows—our  _own_  shows—that immortalizes Winner-with-Taehyun (that our future fans will conveniently ignore anyway). It all feels like some kind of dream. (Feels like a gourmet meal before your execution.) It’s so easy to push away that Taehyun is thinner, that his skin is littered with blemishes and pallid and easily-bruised with deep, dark circles under the eyes. He’s still smiling next to us the whole way through it and it’s really his vision, the whole album is more  _his_  than anything else we’ve ever released. (We also conveniently ignore that we’re mostly stringing together bits of Taehyun’s old lyrics to make the songs and that we can’t use any of his new writing because it’s dark and miserable and sometimes incoherent and his fingers tremble against his lighter so bad that I have to light his cigarettes half the time.)

Seungyoon bursts into our dorm, breathless and red-faced and it’s really cute. And I let myself think that it’s really cute, I let myself take joy in his joy. It’s a new experience. Most of Yoon is a new experience as I start to erase the ghostly outline of Taehyun that I always tried to fit around him. His fingers are interlaced with mine, they’re not as cute or chubby as Taehyun’s—they don’t fit as nicely, it’s just two sets of boney fingers knocking against each other. I try to find some charm in that, though—in it  _not_  being Taehyun, in it being nothing like Taehyun. “Do you wanna try to get some sleep before the radio show in the morning?” I ask. I’m sure that down the hall, Minho and Jinwoo are already fast asleep and have been for a while. If we all lived in the same dorm still, I probably would’ve stayed home too. I would’ve missed out something, I admit.

“I’ll sleep when I’m dead.” He responds. And it’s just such a  _Yoon_  response—the flippant disregard for his own well-being under the guise of being free-spirited that I kiss him again. He’s in the middle of some other thought, his mouth already half-open and he makes a surprised noise into the kiss. He still tastes terrible but I still taste him and it takes both my hands to cup his round face. And he’s not slight or easy to manhandle or easy to curl around. He was a  _force_ , a whirlwind just like the first time I met him. He wouldn’t flutter away. He couldn’t manage anything as light and delicate as “fluttering.” There’s a surprising amount of comfort in that. Kissing him doesn’t feel like we’re two snowflakes, brushing into each other for a brief, beautiful second. It feels  _substantial_. It feels warm and bright like I can come back to this a million times. This time I hold onto Yoon tight, my fingers curling into the hair on the back of his neck, breathing him in every time we have to part.

I don’t talk to Taehyun after “Sentimental,” not really anyway, nothing substantial. Every moment feels like a crisis point and that’s Seungyoon’s job. My best plan to help Taehyun was to let him fix himself anyway. I know where my place is. Taehyun’s always dragged off into company meetings and examinations and check-ups and at some point Seungyoon tells us something about hiatus. And the company is distant and condescending and secretive as always. Then lawyers are involved and Seungyoon’s trying to figure out how to dissolve Taehyun’s contract behind the company’s back and all of Taehyun’s late nights are spent with him. And we stop kissing and I stop sharing a bed with him and breaking him down obviously stopped working at some point. I’ve lost my place in his life. It’s been covered up by a million things we never saw coming (we did…we did) and we stop talking. Eventually there’s some sort of official meeting in a boardroom with no cute little figures or bright movie posters that I’m only physically present for really and they tell us that Taehyun is leaving. He doesn’t seem to be in any state to tell us anything—looking half-dead and shaky. It’s the end of something undefined—something that I sometimes paint as pretty and sometimes let hurt me. It’s the beginning of something decidedly worse, though.

And then Taehyun is gone. Really. And I get rid of his number, for my own sake really. The company never gives us any updates on him. Seungyoon is the first one to reach out. He tries to tell us the important stuff. I try not to listen. I get all my news from the internet where I can feel some degree of separation from the whole thing. So I can shut up my heart for a second or two. I push the last meeting and everything after “Sentimental” out of my mind so I can rewrite our last meeting as that time on the beach. It feels more significant, more romantic. And, I guess, that’s where my own ghost of Taehyun starts haunting me. (And where I start filling it in with an obsessive amount of fan-taken photos and candids and all the interviews and news I can find about him. My most reoccurring Naver search once he leaves is “Nam Taehyun” and I doubt it’s ever changed.)

Seungyoon sleeps sprawled out on his bed. It’s not only hard for me to curl around him, it’s impossible. “Make room for me if you want me to stay.” I complain.

“You  _want_  to stay?” He asks and it’s just so open and hopeful that it stuns me into silence.  

“If you make room.” I finally force out of my mouth but the annoyance sounds faked and I’m obviously caught off guard. Sincerity still rattles me sometimes. He moves some of his limbs enough for me to squeeze around him and it’s comfortable. I don’t have to doubt where my place is. This is the only place I fit.

Seungyoon sleeps spread out and relaxed—or maybe he just passes out that way. He’s limp and malleable, his mouth falling open in a completely unflattering way that’ll leave drool on his pillow in the morning. It’s still endearing. I still stick to my increasingly smaller spot on his bed to keep him company even though he’d probably never notice if I left. His room was messy and cluttered like he was a real kid and not an idol. There were a million half finished-projects scattered around, haphazardly folded pieces of paper, a pile of dog toys that I never saw Thor play with, stuffed animals barely clinging to their spot on the bed, books I know he hadn’t finished (I swear I saw textbooks still in there). It was really  _Yoon_. Taehyun’s room was always draped in fluttery curtains, covered in foreign movie posters from the 90s, filled with half-melted candles and records (actual, vinyl records when he could get his hands on them). It was a show of Nam Taehyun. It was a curator’s collection on display at some museum somewhere of what Nam Taehyun was like. It was something for me to stare at every night while neither of us slept, trying to define him in some way.

I push some of Yoon’s fringe off of his face, it’s not a crispy, bleached blonde anymore, some kind of faded blue instead. He doesn’t look anything like Taehyun (never has)—slack-faced, completely relaxed and passed out. And he has no idea that this has been about Taehyun. He’s peacefully and blissfully unaware that it’s always been about Taehyun. The whole night, dancing with him, babysitting him, kissing him was all about Taehyun. Everything I’ve ever said to him or thought about him, all about Taehyun. Our whole career has been about Taehyun—since he left, since “Sentimental,” since debut, since Team A, since he showed up in Seoul—it’s been about him. Everything he’s ever done as a composer, as a singer, as a musician, as a maknae, as a leader (a role Taehyun never even held) was stained with Taehyun. Or maybe he does know. Maybe he feels the lingering ghost of Taehyun (the ones we’ve all made up, the memories we’ve solidified, Taehyun-with-Winner Taehyun) the same way the rest of us do. Maybe he does feel the blurry concept of Taehyun that we all try to fit over him.

My hands never leave Yoon’s hair—it’s dry and coarse but all our hair is, I have no illusions of it being soft and silky. He scoots closer to my touch in his sleep and it’s cute. It’s cute that he takes what isn’t necessarily given to him, must be that leader drive. He’s not Taehyun. He’s not even close. And the sketchy outline of Taehyun I’d always placed over him just obscured the art that was already there. And there were things that I couldn’t scrub Taehyun from. Our music would always be about him, our careers would always be about him, our public image would always include a ghost of Nam Taehyun. But I didn’t have to kiss him like it was still about Taehyun. I didn’t have to make Seungyoon about Taehyun. I didn’t have to make  _us_  about Taehyun. I could leave him out of this, out of this shared bed, out of a dorm that he was never in to begin with.

Seungyoon’s phone lights up where it lays charging on his nightstand with some text from a friend I don’t know. And I pause. And I think about it. (I think about Taehyun like I always am, like I always have been but this time I’m not just remembering, wishing, hurting—I’m  _thinking_.) I swipe Yoon’s phone open to his texts. “Taehyunnie” is right there, near the top like he never left, like nothing ever changed. The last time they texted was less than a week ago, Seungyoon telling him about something stupid and funny Jinwoo said over dinner. And it’s really like nothing ever happened there, like the two maknaes managed to live in a time capsule of Winner-with-Taehyun forever. And I type out “I miss you” into the app like I have a million other times before because I’ve been living with unmoving scenery too but mine hurt a lot worse than their pretty time capsule. Seungyoon’s probably told Taehyun before, has probably told him many times before, has probably texted it out at this ungodly hour while drunk before too. This won’t look out of the ordinary, Taehyun won’t second guess it.

So I hit send for once. And I know that it’ll go out under Seungyoon’s name. I know that I’m not saying it. I know that it’s not what it was supposed to be, what I waited and waited to be able to do. But I’m just learning to let go, or to hold on, or to move on or whatever I’m supposed to be doing here. It’s the first step. Or maybe it’s the second step of something. Or maybe it’s just another mistake in my string of missteps. Any way, I hit send this time and that’s something at least.

It’s something that twists my heart to admit—something I’ve only been able to say quietly, to myself when I’ve been able to say it at all—but there’s nothing left with Taehyun. There’s no more shared dorms. There’s no more taking care of his pets or him taking care of mine. There’s no more shared music, shared performances. There’s no more nights together or shared beds. It’s just not practical, it’s not happening. I can’t go back to whatever I had with Taehyun. There’s, at best, meals out with the rest of the group where all my words get caught in my throat and I somehow manage to numb myself enough to get through the whole thing without crying. I let him go at the beach (the first time, the last time and every time in between) when I wouldn’t let him in (not all the way, not enough) and never reached out to try to piece him back together. I lost Taehyun before Winner did.

And I’m sick of trying to hold onto smoke. I don’t know why I even tried in the first place. So I grab onto something I can hold instead and lace my fingers into Yoon’s. He’s swaying next to me, eyes closed, badly dancing to our song in the radio studio. He’s not matching the beat even though it’s our song, even though it’s been the same song since Taehyn left. But he slows, opens his eyes at the touch. He’s still drunk from the night before (like I said he would be) but his eyes are clear, his voice is strong, he’s not slurring any of the words and he smiles—not brightly or anything, a little ghost of a smile—at the camera, at the host, at me maybe. And the faded outline of a Taehyun that was never real that I always placed over Yoon isn’t there anymore. I’m just seeing Kang Seungyoon and he’s pretty fucking beautiful or cute or something that makes my heart feel funny.

I’m thinking about dancing with Seungyoon in the living room of our dorms with the dogs. I’m thinking about going back to Busan with him. I’m thinking about a beach trip that doesn’t mean goodbye, that doesn’t mean “I’m sorry,” that means something good finally. And, god, I’m happy that there’s anything at all in our future, forget something  _good_. It’s been so many years of ghosts and pieced together memories, trying to carve something pleasant out of smoke. But there’s a hand in mine now, boney fingers knocking together, a bright smile, probably more parties. There’s something concrete, something solid, something genuine, something to hold on to for once.

At the end of things, we all keep our ghosts of Taehyun because we miss him of course but also because we’re jealous. He got out. He got out of the dungeon, out of the limbo of always begging for a comeback, of the monotonous cycle of recycling the same song, the same concept, the same aesthetic and dance every time. He got to start his own label, do things his own way, drop the idol image. He got something different. (He got a different kind of stress, a different kind of misery, I learn from every interview I read with him but we all try to forget that.) And my fingers are still deeply clawed into mine. I haven’t really learned to let go yet. But I think I’m moving.

And maybe Yoon’s sincerity will hurt just as bad as Taehyun’s mystery. And maybe the new feeling of two sets of boney fingers knocking together means that they were never meant to fit together. And maybe I’ll always think about Taehyun’s thin and fizzing laugh while hearing Seungyoon’s deep bass. And maybe I’ll never make that beach trip with Seungyoon, or maybe I will and it’ll mean “I’m sorry” or “goodbye” just like last time. But at least it’s different this time. At least it will be a new pain to hold onto.

I never see if there’s a response to my text from Seungyoon’s phone. And Seungyoon’s still drunk from the night before, sloppily moving through the steps of “Really Really” in a radio studio too cramped to be dancing anyway. Minho is still caught up in his own world too and Jinwoo is blissfully unaware as he tries to match his soft voice with Yoon’s. And it’s just another radio show, it’s just another “Really Really,” it’s just another too-early morning. It’s just some skinship that could be a joke with our maknae leader. But I sway with Yoon, trying to set an example for the beat he should be moving to. And I’m moving. I’m really moving this time.

**Author's Note:**

> if you want a more concrete ending for this, take another look at the title to get a feel for how this all really ends  
> [tumblr](angelinmyheartt.tumblr.com) [cc](https://curiouscat.me/Nitzer)


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